Export map as image

[marsmathis]

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask, but I have been looking at maplibre etc. and haven’t found a satisfactory answer: How can I export a map to be printed using Versatiles as the data source with one of the provided map styles? Specifically I want to export an SVG, PNG, or PDF which is rendered at a user-provided DPI and zoom level with a specified resolution. Is this possible at all?

[MichaelKreil]

I know three approaches:

1. MapLibre also provides MapLibre Native, which can be used as an NPM package (@maplibre/maplibre-gl-native). You can use it to render maps as images and save them as PNG. Have a look at this small screenshot script which I use to render previews of all VersaTiles styles.

   • Pro: Very easy to use
   • Pro: Very fast.
   • Con: Needs GPU (So it will not work in a GitHub workflow on a ubuntu-latest runner - but it will work on macos-latest)
   • Con: You can only render raster images (PNG, ...), not vector graphics (SVG, ...). But you can try what the maximum image size can be.

2. As a small side project, I tested a hack that uses MapLibre GL JS to extract the vector data and save it as SVG. There is a 2 year old repo versatiles-org/versatiles-renderer/. Not sure if it still works.

   • Pro: renders SVG
   • Con: cannot render labels or symbols
   • Con: buggy two year old hack

3. For printing, I can also recommend using VersaTiles in QGIS.

   • Pro: maximum flexibility
   • Con: you have to do it manually